Films from Hollywood's era of sex and Scandal

“The Night Mayor” (1932)

Queer Ladies in Hollywood: Vintage Edition #3

Tallulah Bankhead was born in 1902 to a powerful political family in Alabama. When Bankhead was 15, she won a screen test through a contest held by Picture Play Magazine and her career was born. She spent the first 8 years of her career in London, performing in many well-received plays, before capturing the attention of Paramount Pictures. Bankhead’s first two films did not spark much interest from movie goers, but although she persisted a while longer she eventually returned to the stage in the early 1930s. Bankhead remained an unknown for most of the decade until she landed her breakout roles in the stage productions of The Little Foxes in 1939 and The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942. Her first large role on the silver screen came in 1944 when she was cast in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.  After landing the part in this hugely influential film and working with the highly regarded director, Bankhead’s career flourished while she continued to perform on stage, with the occasional film and television role.

Despite this success Bankhead’s career remained limited due to the Hays Code. Bankhead was a woman who thoroughly enjoyed her vices of drinking, smoking and, most of all, the pleasures of another woman’s body. It was to her career’s detriment that Bankhead was also pointedly vocal about her activities, not cowering to the taboo of a woman who enjoyed sex that was reinforced by The Code directly. Her lifestyle and her personal refusal to bow down to societal expectations was what confirmed her status as an actress who would have a limited career on the slier screen. 

Bankhead was a sexual being taking her own stand for sexual positivity far before it’s time.

Bankhead was vocal about sex, however she was not publicly specific about the sort of sex she was having. Most people assumed she was heterosexual. However over the years her sexuality proved to be further reaching. There have been many claims (which film historians believe to be legitimate) that Bankhead had affairs with notable stars such as Hattie McDaniel, Patsy Kelly (who personally confirmed the speculation), and singer Billie Holiday. When asked, Bankhead called herself “ambisextrous”.

Written By MK McFadden and Scarlett North-Cavanaugh

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallulah_Bankhead#CITEREFStern2009

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1432

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000845/

Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals. By Keith Stern

Little “nifties” from the Fifties, Innocent and sweet; Sexy ladies from the Eighties, Who are indiscreet.

In the early 1930s, Warner Bros. specialized in these let’s-get-a-troupe-together-and-put-on-a-show musicals before the imposition of the Hays Code - a censorship code not strictly enforced until 1934 and later abolished in 1968 and replaced with the current MPAA ratings system in the U.S. Hence the more overt sexuality of the films of this brief period and the inclusion of the word “sexy” in this song.

The choreography is by Busby Berkeley, the so-called “mad genius” of musical production numbers of the early 1930s. “42nd Street”, however, is one of Berkeley’s lesser works in terms of scope and ambition.